Cameron’s successors

LONDON — If you listen carefully to the Tory mutterings over the fork-clanking plates around you in the heavily subsidized cafeterias of the Palace of Westminster, three names seem to come up in a loop: George Osborne, Boris Johnson and Theresa May. Or if you listen close enough, the talk is of who’s up and who’s down of the three top Tories vying to succeed David Cameron.

The British prime minister has promised not to run for a third term and has hinted he is keen to let his successor have at least two years in Number Ten before the next election in 2020. They may just have won their first majority since 1992, but already Tory minds are drifting to the coming skirmishes for the crown.

George Osborne

Not so long ago, the prospect of this porcelain-faced aristocrat succeeding Cameron was laughed off even by his most senior colleagues. Yet the man who will one day be the 18th Baronet Osborne has now emerged as his most likely successor. Few would have imagined this in 2012, when the chancellor was in such pits of unpopularity that he was even jeered by the crowds at the London Paralympics. But three years can be an epoch in British politics. Craftily pushed forward by Cameron as the face of his drastic cuts to an aggrieved public, Osborne is now something of a hero among Tory MPs.

George Osborne just before presenting the budget to British parliament | EPA

What do Tory insiders think? Tim Montgomerie, a fellow at the Legatum Institute, has been called the most influential Conservative outside the cabinet. “Osborne would have been finished if Cameron had lost the General Election,” says Montgomerie. “Now that Cameron has won the election so decisively, and it was Osborne who was decisive in getting [election strategist] Lynton Crosby involved, Osborne’s star is in the ascendance.”

Osborne’s first moves back in office have much boosted his image. He has affixed his name to the boldest and most popular new policies. “With what we are doing,” said one Tory source, “there should be nuclear-alarm sirens going off inside Labour as we remake the country in our image. They haven’t even heard our bulldozers, it seems. We are going to remake this party as the party of anyone who works: and leave Labour the subsidized rest.”

Osborne is one of the most, if not the most, successful cabinet member. He’s stolen ground from his opponents, like all successful leaders of the past.

Osborne’s recent budget was a huge PR success, with his slashing of benefits to poorer Britons sold under a compelling slogan: “The National Living Wage.” This renaming and raising of the minimum wage to a level above what Labour had promised in the election has seen him steal one of the left’s most successful slogans of recent years, that of the “Living Wage Campaign.”

David Skelton is the head of Renewal, a Conservative group that has long campaigned for the party to take the direction Osborne has now chosen. “What this is about,” says Skelton, “is making the Conservative Party the real workers’ party, the party of work. What we see picked up in the budget is that the party is now campaigning for higher wages, decent jobs, living wage, and a home of your own. It’s redefining the party’s sense of aspiration: it’s not just becoming a tycoon, it’s getting on a bit, too.”

Osborne is now the champion of the so-called Northern Powerhouse, a catchy, almost Victorian slogan that describes a project that will tie together the poorer cities of the north of England and give them more autonomy. This devolution project could well be the government’s greatest legacy, as well as a cunning ploy to win over the Labour heartlands to the Tory side.

“Osborne is one of the most, if not the most, successful cabinet member,” says Skelton, “In terms of dictating the agenda. Labour is simply clueless in how to respond to the budget. He’s stolen ground from his opponents, like all successful leaders of the past, just like Blair, Disraeli, or Macmillan. The important thing to remember here is that Labour’s emotional link to the working class has gone. What happened in Scotland, where Labour collapsed like a house of playing cards, could happen in the north of England, too. This is why they are running scared of the new budget.”

Osborne’s ascendance is as much the result of patronage as policy. He has promoted his former aides to high positions — Sajid Javid is now the business secretary, Robert Halfon the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, Matthew Hancock cabinet office minister, and Greg Hands the chief secretary to the Treasury. They are now part of a strong Osborne faction at the height of government, including energy secretary Amber Rudd, education secretary Nicky Morgan and local government secretary Greg Clark. Osborne is said to have a loyal clique of MPs ready to support him too, prepared for any eventual leadership bid. MPs closely linked to the chancellor have at times included Claire Perry, Gavin Barwell, and Jane Ellison. There are rumors — ones that Osbornites love conveying in Westminster cafeterias — that the universities and science minister Jo Johnson, the brother of Boris, is more of an Osbornite than a Borisite.

“I think both Boris and George are both fairly pragmatic,” says Montgomerie of Legatum. “I think they are both fairly liberal in their conservative politics. I always say there are three legs to compassionate conservatism and those are increasing employment, improving education and strengthening the family. Neither of them is much interested in that last leg. For all the talk of differences between the leading figures, we have seen a remarkable coming together around One Nation Conservatism since the election. This is social justice politics, but a very, very different kind from that of Labour.”

What could trip up the future baronet on his way to the top? Europe and the economy. Should Britain’s recovery falter, or a new, terrifying financial crisis erupt out of a break-up of the eurozone, he will be first to suffer politically. Barring Grexit, Osborne’s biggest challenge is preventing a Brexit. As Cameron’s partner in politics, he has no room for maneuver on the forthcoming ‘In/Out’ referendum. Calamity on the continent could easily humiliate the chancellor with a narrowly won — or even lost — referendum.

Boris Johnson

“The Mayor of London was for many years,” said one Tory source, “quite literally the King over the Water. David Cameron was unpopular in Downing Street with the Liberal Democrats in uncomfortable coalition, and Boris was popular over the Thames in City Hall as the Mayor of London. But that ship may now have sailed.”

Boris Johnson poses for a photograph during the 2015 U.K. general election campaign | EPA

Boris’s friends say he has a romantic streak, backing exciting and catchy policies regardless of whether they are feasible or cost-efficient. Boris’s causes have at one time or another included “Boris Island,” a new mega-airport in the Thames estuary; cycling; an amnesty for illegal immigrants; Euroskepticism; a “living wage” for workers on minimum pay; and “the moral case for capitalism.”

Boris’s enemies say he is simply an attention-seeking opportunist, who latches onto whatever cause he thinks will make headlines.

“He only had popularity to offer,” said one party source. “But now Cameron and Osborne have proved themselves election winners, that is no longer so attractive. The further the Labour party implodes, the less Boris we need.”

Boris is popular, but more amongst party members and activists than MPs. There is no Boris faction, really, in the parliamentary party.

Things were going brilliantly for Boris until things turned out brilliantly for the party in the elections. With polls predicting a hung parliament, there was disillusion in the ranks and panic in the Tory press that the Conservatives would need to immediately crown an election winner — i.e. hail Boris as Tory leader.

Boris is popular, but more amongst party members and activists than MPs. There is no Boris faction, really, in the parliamentary party. A few isolated Tory MPs, such as Victoria Borwick in Kensington, owe him their careers. But his causes are too vague, and disparate, to generate a tight-knit faction. “Lots of people support Boris for different vague reasons,” said one party source. “But nobody interested in a promotion would boast of it now with Osborne rising.”

His rivals are now hounding Boris on his causes: Osborne used his recent budget speech to make jokes at the mayor’s expense over the planned expansion of Heathrow Airport. This led to a flurry of speculation that the chancellor, a Heathrow-expansion supporter, would push for it to humiliate Boris, who once swore to resign if it happened. Theresa May, the home secretary, then seemed to follow up with a real attack, blocking the mayor from deploying expensive water cannons he had purchased for London. As photos of the stunned mayor circulated online, the cleverness of the attack sunk in. Not only was it a simple power play, it also framed him as a financially irresponsible authoritarian.

The poll of party members by the activist blogging platform Conservative Home has caught the dimming of Boris’s star. Whereas before the election Boris had a 4% lead over his nearest Osbornite rival, Sajid Javid, this was now down to 0.2% when members were asked who they thought Cameron’s successor should be. The mutterings in the parliamentary party point to a more serious decline. Johnson was judged — even by himself — as a rather disappointing and ineffective MP before he stood down and renewed his fortunes as mayor of London. Now that he is back in the House and wrapping up his mayoral stint, the hiss is back behind him in the Commons.

“I’m sure that Boris would have become leader if the Tories had lost the election,” says Montgomerie. “It’s not an ideal circumstance for him now. But he’s still in it. We have a bad tendency to read things in contemporary politics in apocalyptic terms. We over-read and over-analyze every trend. I think shares in Boris are being undersold at the moment.”

What are Boris’s options? For all Osborne’s power and influence, the prime minister is still David Cameron. It is he who has the final say over appointments. We will only know how far the Boris star has fallen depending on what position he is offered in cabinet.

Should Boris be snubbed, he has a very clear option — he could become the leader of the ‘out brigade’ and try to defeat Osborne and Cameron as Greece implodes. This is not seen by the Nostradamuses in the tea-rooms as very likely: the mayor has rarely gone for brutal all-or-nothing fights. He declined to comment for this article on his differences with the chancellor and his future plans.

Theresa May

What of the Tory Right? Both Johnson and Osborne are liberal – one could say they are London Tories. Osborne’s loyal biographer Janan Ganesh once described his views as more The Economist — i.e. not those of the right-wing Daily Telegraph. Both are more or less relaxed about membership of the EU, mass immigration, and shirk from the streak of Protestant morality that ran through Thatcherism. This cannot be said for the rest of the party and its base, which often grumbles that the real England is left behind.

Theresa May gives a speech on migration in May 2015 | EPA

The main division within the Conservative Party now is between those who are supportive of David Cameron’s — and thus Osborne’s — mostly cosmetic renegotiation of Britain’s terms of EU membership and those who want to campaign for an ‘Out’ in the coming referendum. But it is not the only one. Many on the Tory Right also feel the government is not doing enough to clamp down on radical Islam, and are quietly alarmed by the changing ethnic composition of England’s cities. The Euroskeptic right is currently lacking a youthful, dynamic leader, but is still expected to put forward an eventual leadership candidate. In the absence of that, Theresa May is sometimes discussed as an eventual candidate for the right. Neither the heir to a baronetcy nor an Etonian, she appeals to another kind of conservative.

“I think she stands for a much more hawkish conservatism on security and immigration,” says Montgomerie. “I think there’s not a massive difference between Boris and George on those issues. But she’s a real exception to that. It’s not just that it’s her brief, it’s that it’s her conviction. She’ll have a much more distinctive pitch. Shares in her are being undersold. They are all contenders and writing anyone off at this stage is a big mistake. There’s a long, long way to go.”